Washington Post Goes Too Far in Bid to Discredit Pete Hegseth, Insults Thousands of Veterans in the Process

The establishment fears Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense. Thus, the establishment has unleashed its loathsome media minions — Democratic activists masquerading as journalists — in an attempt to discredit Hegseth.

Apparently, those minions have not yet recognized that their days of influence have ended. We know their game, for we have seen it many times.

Late Thursday, The Washington Post hit perhaps a new low in establishment “journalism” with a shameful story — lightly and selectively sourced for nefarious purposes — designed to diminish the significance of Hegseth’s Bronze Stars, an award for “bravery and courage” that he happens to share with hundreds of thousands of his fellow veterans.

“Military experts say there is a mistaken belief among much of the American public that the Bronze Star is a rarefied award exclusively for battlefield heroics, which has distorted and inflated its significance in many cases,” per The Post.

Indeed, throughout the story The Post referred to “experts.”

For instance, the U.S. military awarded the Bronze Star “somewhat liberally throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, experts say.”

Likewise, such awards generally “recognize efforts during a deployment rather than a specific action or moment, military experts said.”

One such “expert,” former Army officer Jason Dempsey, characterized the award as akin to a participation badge.

“The expectation is you’re getting one, unless you mess up,” Dempsey said, calling the award “fairly routine and bureaucratic.”

Katherine L. Kuzminski, another “expert,” bemoaned the fact that Americans tend to show decorated veterans too much deference.

Service awards, she said, “signal credibility that may not actually carry into other areas.”

So “experts” said. But the devil, as always, lies in the details.

The Post identified Kuzminski as “a military policy expert at the Center for a New American Security.”

In 2019, the leftist magazine In These Times characterized the Center for a New American Security as “the Hawkish Liberal Think Tank Powering the Kamala Harris Campaign.”

Lo and behold, Dempsey also has served as Adjunct Senior Fellow of the Military, Veterans, and Society Program at CNAS.

In other words, The Post denigrated Hegseth and other veterans by quoting two people from a liberal think tank aligned with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Establishment journalists know no shame.

Fortunately, voters know this by now.

“You’ve really outdone yourselves this time. This is true bottom of the barrel stuff, you insufferable hacks,” Dustin Grage of the conservative news outlet Townhall wrote Thursday on the social media platform X.

You’ve really outdone yourselves this time.

This is true bottom of the barrel stuff, you insufferable hacks.

— Dustin Grage (@GrageDustin) December 6, 2024

“You people really are clueless,” another X user wrote.

ROFL. The same media who tried to hype stolen valor Tim Walz’s ARCOM wants to talk trash about the Bronze Star?!?!

You people really are clueless.

— 📣🔋 Free ASF (@STotino) December 6, 2024

Indeed, the reaction to The Post’s story on X looked almost unanimously hostile.

“Ahaha never seen a 476:8 comment:like ratio before,” one user posted.

Ahaha never seen a 476:8 comment:like ratio before @WatchRatio

— Sauer Patch Lyds (@sourpatchlyds) December 6, 2024

So nobody at WaPo was like, “Maybe we shouldn’t marginalize military accomplishments?”

— MJB (@MJBoylen) December 6, 2024

You do not hate the media enough, no matter how much you think you do.

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) December 6, 2024

Liar. You should be ashamed. The Bronze Star is earned by valor and sacrifice.

— Pete (@PeteFla) December 6, 2024

In sum, The Post story amounted to another very obvious, establishment-ordered hatchet job on Hegseth.

The fact that establishment media hacks would stoop so low suggests either that they do not know that their days of influence have ended, or that their establishment masters are so desperate to derail the nomination of a political outsider that they do not care about shamelessly disguising Democratic partisans as “military experts” in order to denigrate thousands of Hegseth’s fellow veterans.

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Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.

Michael Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in History and has taught at multiple colleges and universities. He has published one book and numerous essays on Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Early U.S. Republic. He loves dogs, baseball, and freedom. After meandering spiritually through most of early adulthood, he has rediscovered his faith in midlife and is eager to continue learning about it from the great Christian thinkers.

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